SCAD athletic director proud of teams' positive approach

He could have used more T-shirts. Quin Monahan, the director for athletics at the Savannah College of Art and Design, had ordered 600 T-shirts to be given away at the women's/men's basketball doubleheader Saturday against Edward Waters College. "They were gone before halftime of the men's game," Monahan said afterward at Savannah High School's Ron Love Athletic Center. The T-shirts commemorated the final home games ever for the SCAD hoops squads, which will be terminated at the end of the 2008-09 season. Only the postseason tournaments remain in The Sun Conference, and the possibility of a run to the NAIA playoffs. The black T-shirts carried a message of single floating words: Dedication, tears, pain, pride, passion, time, legacy. That last word, legacy, was brought up by Monahan -- a longtime associate AD before becoming the AD last summer -- when he spoke to the teams at their banquet Friday night in Savannah. "We had a great banquet," Monahan said Saturday, noting that players' parents and other family members and friends were in attendance. "They had an opportunity to share how much SCAD basketball meant to them. It was very positive." He acknowledged that such a platform could have been an opportunity "to get ugly." Players and their parents were certainly shocked and upset at the news of the program's impending demise last fall. "They're going to leave a legacy," Monahan said Saturday. "I told them, 'That legacy you leave is up to you, whether it's positive or negative.' I couldn't be more proud of how they handled it." The two games over -- both decisive victories for the Bees over the Tigers --Monahan said, "It's been a great day." Great for SCAD basketball, yet bittersweet, of course, because few opportunities remain to add to that legacy.